Sunday, July 14, 2013

Reaper Bones: Vampire and decor

Too bad you can't see them too well, but there are ripples in the blood spring. And in the tomb, that's a rose atop a pillow peaking from that corner. Note: the tomb lid is somewhat warped, but it still fits on top of the tomb.

Here's the first of the Bones figures I've painted for my friend Jeff. He asked I paint all the vampires I could find. There are only two or three that could pass as a vampire, so I'm also painting up a bunch of the scenery, including the tomb and blood spring shown here, and an altar and a pair of candelabras (not done).

I also threw together (painted) a bat swarm, because you need bats with your vampires, of course!

I'm finding it difficult to straighten out bent weapons. I'm trying the hot water method (heat the figure in hot water, reshape and thrust into cold water), but the weapons slowly return to their (mis)shape. I'll (carefully) try boiling water next.

A couple of the scenery pieces are also somewhat warped, though, they're ok for game play - so if you ordered some Bones, don't expect diorama-quality pieces. I'm also finding detail a bit lacking in the plastic, but honestly, at these prices, these are still good figures.

I'm also trying a few Vallejo paints I picked up. I'm not liking the flesh too much- the base shades (Flat flesh) have a little too much orange in them. The highlight is ok. I'll try a different base shade to see if that helps.

As part of payment for doing his Bones figures, Jeff will be purchasing some new paints for me. Instead of Vallejo, I'm going for some Reaper Master Series High Density (NOT the regular Master series which I hear bad things about.) The Reaper paint will be cheaper (in the box sets), and they're arranged in triads (since I like to paint that way.) And I've heard decent reviews for at least the HD series.

I wanted to go Vallejo, but I can't find a compatibility chart (ie: X color of Vallejo = X color of Foundry.) It's not imperative I have all the exact colors, but I have a few favorite Foundry colors (that I'd prefer in the dropper bottles.) There are a LOT of good charts out there, but none have Vallejo AND Foundry. And, in any case, I'm acquainted with a few Reaper colors; when I first started painting in ernest, I used a set of Reaper Pro paints- and many of those colors continue on in the Master and Master HD series.

EDIT: On second look, the flesh colors actually aren't too bad- it just came across orange-ish in the photo (which was photoshopped out of the photo in this post.) So All I have to do is change my camera settings to adapt to the new Vallejo (and later Reaper) palettes.

4 comments:

I used the boiling water method. Boiling water for 8-10 seconds and then directly into cold water (an ice bath) and voila! It worked well for me anyway. Cool idea to paint the minis in "groups". Makes it seem more manageable.

Everything looks great! yea, the boiling water and it has to be held in place going into the ice water I have heard....which is key also, iced water as you want to shock the plastic as I have heard it termed...if it slowly cools it tends to warp back.

The boiling water method worked wonders. Most of the bent parts straightened themselves out in the hot water. Pull them out of the boil with tongs, position by hand if need be, then dunk in ice water. One or two weapons are being stubborn & not keeping a straight edge.

I've also had an incident where figures kept in a hot car bent out of shape. Fortunately, these were unpainted figures & easy to bend back with the boiling water bath. Going forward, figures will need to be stored without any sort of pressure. Squeezing them into a foam square like a metal figure does not work.